F1: Vettel Grabs British Grand Prix Pole

Formula 1

F1: Vettel Grabs British Grand Prix Pole

Sebastian Vettel scored his second consecutive pole position of the season in qualifying for Sunday’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone...

SPEED Staff | Posted June 20, 2009 Silverstone (GBR)

Red Bull's German driver Sebastian Vettel celebrates in the parc ferme of the Silverstone circuit after the qualifying on the pole position for Sunday's British Grand Prix. (Photo: Getty Images)

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Sebastian Vettel scored his second consecutive pole position of the season in qualifying for Sunday’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

In what is scheduled to be the last F1 event at the track that held the inaugural world championship event, the teams set the fastest average lap speeds around the former aerodrome for 16 years, as the Red Bull duo of Vettel and Mark Webber topped 147mph averages.

However, come the crucial Q3 session, it was Vettel who converted the team’s obvious advantage this weekend, beating Brawn GP’s Rubens Barrichello by a relatively large margin of 0.347s. Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber had to settle for third place, one position lower than he started in last season’s race, although he may have cause to complain that Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen disrupted his final qualifying lap at the entry to Stowe corner.

Afterwards, Webber was blunt about the incident, saying: “I don’t what Kimi was doing, drinking vodka or dreaming or something. I don’t know what the hell he was doing”.

Toyota’s Jarno Trulli was fourth fastest, with the surprise performances coming on row three, with Williams’ Kazuki Nakajima qualifying a career-best fifth, ahead of world championship leader Jenson Button, who is outside the top five on the grid for the first time in 2009. Nico Rosberg was seventh, alongside compatriot Timo Glock, with the accused Räikkönen and Renault’s Fernando Alonso filling out the top ten.

Ferrari’s Felipe Massa was a surprising Q2 casualty in 11th place, while reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton has a dismal homecoming, qualifying second-to-last, ahead only of Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi, and behind Force India’s Adrian Sutil, who had a high-speed crash at the entry to the Abbey chicane when he appeared to suffer a mechanical failure. The German emerged unhurt, but it was enough to bring out a red flag in Q1, ending Hamilton’s hopes of progressing.

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